Blend S
Blend S is a Japanese four-panel comic strip manga written and illustrated by Miyuki Nakayama in Houbunsha's Manga Time Kirara Carat magazine from 2013 to 2022 and collected into eight volumes. A 12-episode anime television series adaptation produced by A-1 Pictures aired from October to December 2017.
Plot
High school girl Maika Sakuranomiya has trouble finding a part-time job because of how scary she looks when smiling. However, she is scouted one day by an Italian man who is also the manager of Stile, a café where its waitresses are given unique traits such as tsundere and younger sister. Maika is given a sadistic trait because of her looks and has to adopt a dominant and cruel persona when servicing customers, particularly masochistic ones.Characters
;Maika Sakuranomiya;Kaho Hinata
;Mafuyu Hoshikawa
;Miu Amano
;Hideri Kanzaki
;Dino
;Kōyō Akizuki
;Aika Sakuranomiya
;Kōichi Sakuranomiya
Media
Manga
Blend S is a four-panel comic strip manga written and illustrated by Miyuki Nakayama. It made its first appearance in Houbunsha's Manga Time Kirara Carat magazine with the October 2013 issue, and began serialization in the magazine with the March 2014 issue. The last chapter was published in the June issue on April 28, 2022. Eight tankōbon volumes of the manga have been released from January 27, 2015, to May 26, 2022. The manga was licensed in North America by Sol Press before it went out of business and left the translation unfinished with only one volume published. At Anime Expo 2024, Yen Press announced that they licensed the series for English publication.Anime
An anime television series adaptation, directed by Ryōji Masuyama and produced by A-1 Pictures, premiered on October 8, 2017. Gō Zappa supervised the series' scripts and Yōsuke Okuda designed the characters. Go Zappa wrote the screenplay, and Tomoki Kikuya composed the music. Aniplex of America licensed the anime for release in North America. The opening theme "Bon Appétit♡S" and ending theme "Detarame na Minus to Plus ni Okeru Blend Kō" are performed by Maika Sakuranomiya, Kaho Hinata, and Mafuyu Hoshikawa under the unit name Blend A.In November 2017, the opening theme of the series became a viral meme on Twitter and YouTube, which consists of adding an additional word to the opening part of the song: "Smile, Sweet, Sister, Sadistic, Surprise, Service...", followed by that word, which may refer to pop culture or another popular meme, regardless of whether it starts with the letter S or not, instead of "We are Stile!!".